Get Moving

Back at the beginning of the year I wrote this post about what I wanted to accomplish in 2015. You can check the article out if you want, but the main point was that I wanted specific goals so that I wouldn’t look back this December and ask, “what did I DO with this year?”

I will have an update on all those goals as the year progresses, but so far I have just really enjoyed having a “plan” for the year. Without setting hard resolutions such as “I will not…” or “I will lose ___ pounds” my goals were more about lifestyle and how I wanted to live. Most of it centered around doing things to make life more simple, less complicated and… free. Tavis and I keep calling it the year of Freedom.

One of the goals every year is to keep active. Sometimes that is going to the gym regularly, or when I am in Puerto Rico that means running with my running club. Right now we are temporarily living in Washington, DC, so it has been hard for me to keep any type of schedule or routine.

I was thrilled when I got my UP MOVE tracker by Jawbone in the mail last week. I have only been wearing it for a week now, but I wanted to give you a starting point to compare it to in a few weeks.

This post was written in partnership with Jawbone and their UP MOVE tracker. All thoughts, experiences and stories are my own and authentic. I was compensated for this post and was given the UP Move tracker as part of that compensation. Please visit this page for my full disclosure policy.

I opened up the tracker and downloaded the free app featuring Smart Coach on Monday and was to excited to wait until the next day to start using it, so day 1 the tracking starts at 11am, not 6am like the rest of my week.

I was over at my sisters house for the weekend, so she was helping me set it up and was excited at some of the great features that the UP MOVE tracker has that her fitness style band does not have. (I will say she was a little jealous)

The features that I noticed right away that make the UP Move tracker easy and comfortable to wear are:

The UP MOVE does not have to be taken off to shower since it is “splash roof”. It is not recommended to submerge it in a bath or when swimming, but showering and sweat from working out is fine.

The UP MOVE does not need to be charged and the battery that comes with it lasts up to 6 months! You can pick up a package of 2 batteries (CR2032) for $2.75 on amazon. For me, this is a small price to pay for not having to remember to charge it regularly. I am more likely to succeed with something when there are fewer obstacles to overcome, no matter how small…

The UP MOVE is light weight and has a soft, flexible band (that can be purchased separately) and it comes with a clip so you can attach it to your clothes. I enjoy wearing it on my wrist like a watch, but for those who wear a watch or bracelets you might like the option to clip it to yourself.

Some of the other features that I am loving:

The sleep tracking part of the Smart Coach in the app. It is a much more honest way of looking at how I sleep and based on my movement as I sleep. I put it in sleep mode when I am crawling into bed by pressing and holding down the tracker button until the “moon” icon flashes to put it in sleep mode. In the morning I press the tracker button again to put it in “active” mode. It tells me when I was sleeping lightly, when I was getting deep sleep and when I was awake. I can even tell how many times I got up to pee or check on Aiden in the middle of the night, and how long it took me to get back to sleep. I can’t wait to see the charts on my sleep after having used it for several weeks!

I love that I don’t have to plug it in to sync! I don’t need to do anything other than just wear it. Even if I forget to put it in “sleep ” mode I can enter my bed time and wake up time the next day on the app and the Smart Coach will analyze my movement during that time and tell me how I slept during that period. This was a great feature when I accidentally turned the tracker to active mode in the middle of the night, a few days ago.

I am loving that even just wearing the tracker is causing me to think about how much I move and how much I sit idle during the day. This week when I was at the park with Aiden, I found myself walking circles around the playground while I watched him play rather than sitting on the bench watching him. That was such an easy thing to do that would not have occurred to me before wearing my UP MOVE Tracker.

I have not been using the food tracking feature this week. It sounds like it would be a great feature, but I have just not been motivated to us it yet. Maybe this next week I will get my stuff together and start tracking my food.

I also want to take advantage of the Smart Coach a little more. I have used it a little this week but largely ignored it as I was learning the other features of the tracker.

Check back with me in a few weeks and I’ll give you an update on how it is going!!

Comments

Hi Ashley! After reading your post, I ordered an UP MOVE tracker (they are 20% off right now – about $40) and really like it. I’ve had a very expensive Body Bugg that worked for about a month (customer service would never answer calls or emails!), a $99 clip on Fitbit that I forgot to remove and it went through the wash (that killed it) and I then bought a more expensive Fitbit ($150) that got recalled 18 months later for causing allergic reactions! So my experience with these devices has been long (and disappointing), but I’m very encouraged by the UP MOVE. After having “fancier” models, I’ve learned that I don’t need the heart-rate monitoring, but definitely need something that I can wear in the shower and that looks more attractive than the masculine-looking trackers. I wish that it could tell when I’ve fallen asleep instead of having to manually put it into sleep mode, but other than that – I think it’s great. They even have reminders in the app that I’ve set up to remind myself to drink water or take my vitamins.

Thanks for your review/introduction to the UP MOVE. I had no idea it was out there!

Kathryn,
Thanks for the feed back!! I have loved the UP MOVE so far and am looking forward to seeing the charts after I track my food for a few weeks (I got started on that part a few weeks late…)
Just so you know, if you forget to put it in “sleep mode” you can add the sleep back in the next day or a week later!
From your home screen on the app, tap the blue “+” symbol at the bottom center of the screen, then tap the moon symbol and it takes you to the “add sleep” screen.
You can use the date and time function to add the sleep in. Ex: 9:30PM to 5:30AM. Once you add it in the tracker retroactively analyzes your movement during that time period and can still tell you how much “sound sleep”, “light sleep” and “awake time” you had during the time you entered!
That is one of my favorite features since I often forget to put it in sleep mode 😉